


Unrequited Stranger

by KingpinCobblepot (Theonlylucysaxon)



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, My friend Riz got a prompt, Unrequited Love, and it gave me minor inspiration to do a little angsty thing, and told me about it, but exactly the kind of person who would pine after Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, from a not super perfect character, have the angsty thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 20:05:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15937343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theonlylucysaxon/pseuds/KingpinCobblepot
Summary: A stranger buried in the staff of Oswald Cobblepot harbors a long standing sense of love and longing for the man who has hardly ever noticed him. Basically a big introspective mess of feelings from an OC background character as he semi-obsesses over Oswald Cobblepot.





	Unrequited Stranger

Fiddling with the knife. It was a nervous tick that the young man had picked up years ago, when he was just a teenage bet taker down at the track. God, those days felt like a lifetime ago. Back when Maroni’s bookie paid his boss out of the winnings, and that boss cut the kid a check every couple weeks for a few thousand dollars-- which was typically wasted on booze or dates or new clothes. Stuff a teenager thinks is everything, and it sort of is at the time. But it’s also nothing in the end. It all leads to nothing. 

Michael used to play look out in those days. When the boss would need to squeeze some poor bastard who was welshing. He was way too scrawny to ever be much more than a fall guy, get away driver, or maybe a good alibi witness if he wore a clean shirt and some khakis down to the station now and again. Organized crime was run like that. He always knew it. He knew they were Italian and the higher ups were like a family, and he was just some fourth generation fruity Irish punk, and in a hot second, they would drop him or sacrifice him to the GCPD if ever they needed to. That’s why any time he had to be a part of that kind of violent shit… It made the kid nervous. 

So he’d fiddle with his switchblade or pocket knife. Whatever he had on hand. Just play with it, one hand to the other, twirling, little flicks… Something to keep his hands busy. It’s a habit a boyfriend from a few years ago back had once called the most reliable thing about him. A little mean spirited, but Michael knew it was probably true. It was a sure fire way to tell when he’s worried, uncomfortable, or in that case lying through his teeth. Which he had been at the time, when he told the guy he loved him. It wasn’t that the guy was a bad guy… But well, Michael at the time didn’t even know if he could really love someone. 

That was 18 though. That was youth. That was stupidity. That was working for Fish Mooney counting money at the end of the night and helping run deals across town with his baby face as insurance and having cheap sex whenever and wherever. That was… A different time entirely. 

A time before Oswald Cobblepot. 

Now don’t think he was a romantic. He decidedly wasn’t. At fourteen, his mother took off and left him with a dead father, an empty fridge, and an eviction notice. Michael wasn’t idealistic enough or stupid enough to believe in romance. That being said, he still remembered the first time he saw the crime lord. It felt like he had been an entirely different person, it had been so long ago. At some meeting of the higher-ups. He was there in the background just to watch and fire if needed. His gun was within an easy grasp even as he rolled his switchblade between his fingers within his coat pocket and held only a vague interest for the conversations. 

That was, until he entered. 

His walk was off kilter, that was noticed immediately. Of course. Probably a business related injury. Plenty of people had them. And his suit was… Well, the guy was clearly one of the aforementioned higher-ups. But the thing that captivated Michael… The thing that drew in his attention and kept his gaze fixed on the man? Those eyes. Those deep, blue green, vibrant eyes that were striking and strange and starkly in contrast to the rest of the man. He would have taken the stranger back to his car and shown him a good time instantly. He was in full considered, sudden, profound attraction for the man and those eyes of his. The power helped as well though, of course. Didn’t it always? 

He had almost instantly started trying to remember the guest list for the evening. He knew most, but this guy-- well he’d remember those eyes surely. Names rushed through his head, but then he was aided by one of the old guard greeting the handsome stranger with a handshake. 

_“Mr. Cobblepot. Lovely to see you again. I hope you’ve looked over my business proposal.”_

Cobblepot…. Cobble-- Oswald Cobblepot. Former umbrella boy to Fish herself. He had started moving up just around the time Michael made his move from lower tier employee of a lower tier employee of Don Maroni, to a lower tier employee of Fish Mooney-- admittedly an employee of Don Falcone, but higher tier easily. It was a move up. A bit at least. They missed each other in terms of work by a few months at best. Too damn bad. Michael couldn’t help but feel the rising curiosity as the night proceeded and he tried (and failed) not to gawk at Oswald for the duration of the evening. There was just something so intriguing about him. He was handsome in a strange, unique way. Striking perhaps is the right word. 

And remarkably sexy in the way he managed the room, working all angles with this smile on his face that was polite and yet disdainful all at once. Yes, disdain. It twinkled in his yes and Michael couldn’t help admiring him for it. These were easy people to hate, but they weren’t necessarily easy people to lie to. Oswald Cobblepot was doing both without issue of one another. 

That night had been the first of it’s kind to feature the notorious Penguin in attendance. That’s the name he took as he moved further up the social ladder. Over time… Admiration birthed more admiration. His work lead him to employment for Mr. Penguin directly and Oswald evening praised his skills on one or two occasions and adopted him to his personal security detail. It was somewhere around the time of Michael discovering his own dead beat disappearing act of a mother had died-- and being granted unapologetic leave by Oswald to go to her memorial. He hadn’t even wanted to go, but the Penguin hadn’t waited for an answer when he gave his condolences and insisted he go.,. It was an act of rare and strange kindness, an act out of place in the city he had come to know so well… But somehow, he realized, it was an act of decorum, dignity, and consideration that was far from out of place on Oswald Cobblepot.

It's who his boss was. 

Who the penguin was. 

That was around the time he started to fall in love with him. 

Don’t worry. His love wasn’t some… Profound, earth shattering kind of love. It wasnt the stuff of fairy tales. It didn’t break curses or change the world. It didn’t leave his days filled with pining. It wasn’t a big kind of love. It was small. Aching. A feeling of pain that centered in his core anytime he had to watch this man, this strange, selfish, brilliant man work. A feeling of desire that pooled with sincere admiration and something more. Something he had never felt for anyone. Not ever. A selflessness when it came to Mr. Cobblepot. He would have taken a bullet for him which was insane because he’d never so much as purchased a present for another person in his lifetime. But he… He would have died for Oswald. 

He spent his days with it. Cultivating it. Feeling it. Living it. Living the love he felt in silent, quiet adoration. He watched Oswald, guarded him. And aside from orders or status reports, they never really talk. But he hears Oswald talk. All day. All the time. Hears his meetings, listens to his phone calls. It comes with the gig of being his security. He follows him, and he gets to know him in this way that’s almost painfully one sided. Especially when Nygma comes into things. Watching them feels like a punch in the gut that he isn’t allowed to react to. No. He has to keep silent and impartial and remain as wholly stoic as possible. It isn’t his place to feel, but god does he feel. 

He wants to kill him. He wants to…. 

Then Oswald dies.

And no one really grieves. The public forget the mayor so quickly and the whole world of crime just moves along as if nothing really is different and it’s maddening. Michael is consumed with the grief in a way he can’t share with anyone. In a way he bears the burden of alone. He loved him. He loved him so deeply and so purely and now he’s gone. And he’s not even allowed to mourn. He’s not allowed to feel it. They were nothing. He was nothing to Oswald who somewhere in the midst of lust and crush and want and admire became everything to him. His days filled with protecting him and worrying for him and now…. Now what is his life? 

It was empty and monotonous for a while. A lot of drinking and screwing and he got a hell of a lot better at killing people than he had ever been before. That was when he called what he had felt for Oswald love. A sociopath in his own mind, having pushed his entire life to care about nothing and no one as much as possible, and somehow losing Oswald from his days had hurt. Everywhere. All at once. All the time. For all that Oswald had never been his, he felt like he lost something all the same. A big something. Everything. The drinking helped.

Then Oswald came back with monsters in tow, and with vengeance on his mind. 

Michael cried in the mens room that day. Just this slender, petite man and these big wet tears of relief and craved being able to embrace the man he worshipped from afar. That wasn’t his place though. That wasn’t his job. All the touch he received was a handshake when he was rehired for his security team and told he had always been reliable. 

And now, well life was back to normal. Michael still had cheap sex, still drank his share of booze, still twirled his knife in his greatest moments of discomfort or anxiety. That just happened to somehow become a signature move of his around his circles, he discovered, because he did it all the time when Oswald came back. Because he spent all his days, anxious with fear of the idea he’d lose him again. 

Leaning against a nearby wall and watching Oswald meet in this dank parking garage with a weapons manufacturer from out of town, it occurs to Michael that he doesn’t care. It’s sappy, romantic, disgustingly weak… But yeah he does it over Oswald. He does everything about Oswald. And vaguely nurses the fantasy of one day being able to tell him-- to help him see the truth. It’s not just the guy on ice that knew him, that saw him, that was capable of understanding him…. 

Michael gets it. He gets Oswald and what’s more… He loves him. He loves him selflessly, and silently, and with more regard to Oswald’s needs than to anything else. Oswald deserves to be happy. Thats the real fantasy though, isn’t it? 

The idea that the Penguin could ever be happy with him.


End file.
